Slot predicted ‘slow’ Liverpool defeat as Van Dijk humbled on history-making, record-breaking night | OneFootball

Before assessing the ongoing existential crisis that is Liverpool Football Club, still reigning champions of a division their manager actively dislikes, it must first and foremost be said that Arne Slot’s comedic timing is impeccable.

To express sympathy for his own “football heart” and describe “most of the games I see in the Premier League” as “not for me a joy to watch”, then witness his side toil to an unimaginative, insipid, anaemic and entirely deserved defeat to a team already consigned to relegation, is a genuinely great bit.

As Slot himself said in his vague praise of England’s top flight: “Everyone can win against everyone.” But those chances are certainly enhanced against this version of Liverpool when their set-piece effectiveness reverts to the mean and Molineux picks up an unexpected backwind.

There was at least a congratulatory handshake for Rob Edwards on the touchline.

“The two games we won both managers had disappeared,” the Wolves coach said after Unai Emery headed straight for the tunnel once Aston Villa ambled into a needless defeat five days ago. “They probably think they can turn up and win given how the season has gone!”

There was an element of that complacency to this Liverpool performance, especially in a laborious first half. Wolves didn’t muster a shot until Rodrigo Gomes gave them the lead in the 77th minute, but the onus was never on them to.

The champions, the Champions League side, arbiters of The Beautiful Game, the doyens of open-play excellence, were always going to be held responsible for the enjoyment levels of a game Steven Gerrard described as “pretty boring” at half time.

By that point, Wolves and Liverpool had both undeniably played 45 minutes of association football. To discuss anything else would risk gross exaggeration.

It only emphasised how deceptive the West Ham scoreline was. A five-goal win ought to empower any attack but that and a couple of deeply unconvincing 1-0 wins over Sunderland and Nottingham Forest seemed to have encouraged an air of arrogance in a Liverpool side as adept as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United at crowing about the turning of corners, only to encounter a dead end in an eternal maze of deep-rooted inconsistency.

Slot must have been grateful not to have benefited from the set-piece scourge. That it was Cody Gakpo, a player many Liverpool supporters have pinpointed as a teacher’s pet of sort, who ensured Liverpool were kept honest was an added bonus.

They should have scored early in the second half from Hugo Ekitike’s front-post flick at a corner. Curtis Jones waited on the line to convert, Gakpo poked the ball up onto the bar under pressure from a defender, and Milos Kerkez had no time to judge its flight before Wolves cleared the danger.

It was a moment of absurd misfortune – but Liverpool had done nothing to earn any luck.

Rio Ngumoha offered a brief spark upon his earliest introduction into a Premier League game, but it was two Wolves substitutes who combined more potently.

Tolu Arokodare’s touch to bring down a high ball was sumptuous, and his pass into one of Wolves’ many Gomes’ was exceptional. But the subtle shove on a jumping Virgil van Dijk was gloriously decisive. And the finish wasn’t bad either.

Rarely had a smash ever been grabbed so shamelessly. Wolves soaked up 13 largely pointless shots to take the lead with one.

That Liverpool were able to equalise – as much due to Jean-Ricner Bellegarde’s atrocious square pass as the way Mo Salah capitalised to score – and still lose is testament to their volatility.

Most clubs would push on to win at that point, especially against a side bottom and until this week still in contention to be described as the worst team in Premier League history. But not Liverpool, whose Premier League games have involved more stoppage-time goals than any other club this season.

Those 14 goals have been split completely evenly, with eight points earned and six dropped after the 90th minute. And that isn’t including the Fulham draw in January, when they did both.

It was the first time ever a team in the relegation zone has scored a 90th-minute winner against the reigning Premier League champions; the five games Liverpool have lost to goals scored in the 90th minute or later is already an all-time Premier League record in a single season.

“It was slow, we were predictable, sloppy in possession and wrong decision-making,” said Van Dijk, whose strop spoke actual volumes as four wins and three clean sheets since the Manchester City collapse disintegrated under the weight of about five different individual mistakes for Andre’s deflected winner: Curtis Jones’ pass, Alisson’s kick, Ngumoha and Federico Chiesa’s tracking and Joe Gomez’s block all left too much to be desired.

The captain’s moment of introspection after being humbled by Arokodare was rather quieter and less pronounced. But at least Slot’s poor “football heart” was treated to three goals scored from open play and a match that, for Liverpool’s rivals at least, would have been “a joy to watch”.